


Better Left Unnamed

by RiBread



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, Dissociation, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Pre-Canon, also I made one of the crew members Nonbinary because I can, anyway I wrote this before Taliesin gave any more details on this part, basically for the entire story, it's Percy's backstory what do you expect, it's that part of Percy's backstory when he's on a boat?, so it's probably not canon anymore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:20:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26383267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiBread/pseuds/RiBread
Summary: "Percy kept running, eventually jumping into a freezing river and floating unconscious to freedom. He did not remember waking up on a fishing boat. He barely remembered the next two years as he slowly made his way as far south as possible.Then one night, Percy had a dream. A roaring cloud of smoke offered him vengeance against those who destroyed his family. When he awoke, Percy began to design his first gun."A closer look at what Percy didn't remember.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Better Left Unnamed

It was about 2 in the morning and captain Arden was dozing at the helm of his small fishing boat as it traveled north, when a yell from the lookout shocked him back to awareness.

“Man overboard! Cap’n, come quick! There’s someone in the river!”

Arden rushed to the port bow, grabbing for rope as the lookout swung down from the crow’s nest. The other crew members who had this early watch were gathering too, roused by the shout.

Sure enough, in the barely there pre-dawn light, Arden could make out a small, pale, figure, floating face down in the icy water several yards from the port bow. The current had shoved the body up against a rock and pinned it there like a mounted butterfly. Arden’s heart constricted.

“Ho there!”

The call was surely in vain. He wasn’t even sure the figure was alive. But nevertheless, he grasped one end of the rope, handing the other off to his first mate Scully, and leaned out over the bow. 

Next to him, Scully’s shirt hit the deck, and a moment later there was a splash as he dove into the icy current. The rope in Arden’s hands strained, but the knot Scully had tied around his own waist held firm. In no time he had the figure in his arms, and Arden and the crew were heaving them back over the side of the boat. 

“Blankets! Now! And dry clothes!” Arden barked, and the crew scrambled to follow his orders. Scully was already stripping off his soaked breeches and pulling back on the shirt he’d discarded. Traveling rivers this far north, they’d all learned well the dangers of hypothermia, and wet clothes would only speed the process. 

Seeing that Scully was tending to himself, Arden turned back to the one he’d rescued. The boy-- he could see now it was a boy, and a human one at that-- was clearly young, little more than a child. He lay still on the deck, and for a tense moment Arden wondered if they’d been too late. Then a violent shiver racked the boy’s unconscious form, and Arden lept into action. There was still time, but not much. 

The sopping wet clothes went first. Washed by the river, they were still stained irreparably with what looked like blood and other grime and tattered within an inch of being rags. Stranger still, despite the state they were in, Arden could tell that at one time the fabric and make had been very high quality indeed.

As he removed the shirt, his breath caught in his throat once again. The boy’s back, arms, chest… his whole body was a pale expanse latticed with hundreds of lashes, cuts, bruises, and worse. The lacerations crisscrossed from his neck to his hips were far too linear to be accidental. Some were practically scarred over, though still red and angry, while some were so fresh that they began to bleed again with just the brush of the shirt moving across them.  
“What in the blazes…” Arden muttered to himself, before shaking his head and calling out once again, “Kara! I need a medic here, now!” 

“Aye, Cap’n!” 

A rough blanket and a small pile of clothing were dropped next to him, and he turned his attention to getting the trousers off next. The boy’s legs were a similar story to his back, and Arden winced just to look at him. The kid couldn’t have been more than 17. What the hell had happened to him? Arden wrapped the blanket around the boy’s shoulders as gently as he could manage, and propped him up against the bulkhead as the ship’s gnomish medic approached, surgeon’s kit in hand. 

“What’s going on here, captain?” Kara knelt beside the boy and sucked in a long breath through her teeth. “His hair. Look at this.” 

Arden looked. He’d been focused elsewhere, but now he saw that even as it dried, the boy’s hair was still plastered to his head. It was tangled and matted with dirt, grime, and… 

“Blood.” Kara shook her head. “We’ve got to get him conscious, it could be a head wound. And I think I’m gonna have to shave that hair so I can look for damage.” 

“Do it.” Arwen cursed internally, wishing he’d thought to buy healing potions last time they were at port. While Kara was talented, she only had the barest traces of healing magic, and the kid was in a bad way. 

Kara took a deep breath, channeling the bit of natural magic she possessed, and a gentle yellowish light began to gather around her hands and pour into the boy’s chest. Arden watched as the most recent of his cuts, still sluggishly dripping blood, slowly stopped and sealed. The boy coughed, then retched, the water in his lungs helped on its way out by Kara’s seed of magic. His eyes rolled under his eyelids and the retching became coughing once more, culminating in a sudden, wheezing intake of breath that sounded almost painful. He twitched, and then thrashed under Kara’s hands, suddenly choking on nothing but air as though he were still underwater. 

“Woah, woah there! You’re safe.” Arden kept his voice low, gentle, as the boy coughed and gasped, pressing himself against the bulkhead as if trying to pull as far away from the two sailors as possible. “We found you in the water, my medic’s gonna take a look at you. You’re gonna be fine.”

Slowly, the boy’s breathing began to steady, but it was a long moment before he seemed to register that he was being spoken to. He lifted his head and blinked at Arden-- his eyes a startling blue, but with something clouded over them. As though he wasn’t fully there. He didn’t speak. Arden remembered what Kara had said about a head injury, and worry filled him again. 

“Kara, can you get his hair? We’re just going to check you over,” he turned back to the boy, “but we have to cut your hair. Is that ok?”

No response. He simply sat there, still naked but for a loincloth and the blanket on his shoulders, shivering. His eyes darted back and forth, and then down at his hands. Arden could see the broken fingernails and bloodied knuckles there.

“...C-Cass.”

The voice was quiet, broken by shivers and a throat hoarse from misuse, but it was something. Arden smiled encouragingly.

“He speaks! Is that your name, kid?” Kara was pulling out scissors and a shaving razor, so Arden decided his job was to keep the boy distracted so she could work.

The boy stared at him for a few seconds, then shook his head. 

Kara touched his shoulder as she came up next to him, and he jumped, flinching away from her like a frightened animal. His eyes landed on the razor in her hand and widened in terror and something like… recognition? He shook even harder, but didn’t move as she came closer and put one hand on his head to guide the scissors through the matted hair. The boy squeezed his eyes closed, but still didn’t move. Arden felt his heart clench again. He clearly expected pain, but wasn’t fighting it. What the hell had been done to him?

Kara trimmed out the worst matts with the scissors, then shaved away the rest to less than an inch. It fell to the deck, thick locks of brown hair clotted with blood and grime. She ran her hands over the boy’s head, searching for injuries. Through it all he sat unmoving, eyes shut tight. 

Eventually, she pulled away, and the boy collapsed against the bulkhead. He shook with panicked gasps, as if he’d been holding himself together the whole time by sheer force of will. Kara looked at Arden with her lips pursed, but all he could do was shake his head. Clearly, neither of them knew where to start with this. Arden cleared his throat.

“Hey, let's get you dressed. I have fresh clothes for you.” 

The boy looked up, and Arden passed him the bundle. Nothing special, just loose brown breeches and a soft cotton shirt. The boy looked them over, and pulled them on mechanically. Kara leaned in to whisper to Arden. 

“He might have a slight concussion, but nothing too life threatening. None of his injuries look like someone was trying to kill him, just…” 

just cause pain. Arden could see it too. With the way the lashes were arranged, it had to be torture. Arden had seen grown men broken down to almost nothing by torture before, and in a child… well, he wasn't surprised the boy wasn’t speaking much. 

When he looked back up, the boy was dressed, kneeling awkwardly over the pile of discarded rags Arden had stripped him of. He rummaged in a pocket of the trousers for a moment, before coming up with a slightly bent contraption of wire and glass, glinting gold in his hand. His fingers were precise and sure, re-creating a familiar shape from the damaged metal, and a moment later he had a pair of spectacles settled neatly on his nose. His eyes were still clouded when he turned back towards Arden, but with the glasses perched on his face he looked… older, maybe. More present. Arden stepped forward, slowly, one hand out.

“My name’s captain Arden. This is my ship. Is there something we can call you, son?”

The boy flinched slightly, for a reason Arden couldn’t quite place, but tentatively took Arden’s hand and shook in an almost courtly manner. His voice was still rough, and far away as though floating, but clear, and with the trained precision and elocution of royalty. His eyes seemed unable to focus on anything as he spoke.

“Perciv… just Percy.” 

“Alright then, ‘just Percy.’ Let’s get you some rest. You’ve really been through the mill, huh?”

There was no response from Percy, but he stood shakily and followed Arden towards the sleeping quarters without argument. 

Once Percy was settled, Arden headed back up on deck. Something about Percy’s presence reminded him of something he’d seen before, and he meant to ask about it. The watch was just changing to morning crew as he returned to the deck, so it was easy to find his youngest lookout, Cyril. Cyril had come to the crew three years ago, when they were only 19, after disease had killed the captain and much of the crew of the ship they’d been a deckhand on since they were a child. Arden would admit he had a talent for picking up strays, and most of the crew had something in their past they didn’t like to talk about. Cyril, however, had proven to be surprisingly open about sharing their feelings. The crew had learned it was how Cyril coped. If they had to hold it all inside, they shut down. That kind of shutdown was what Arden planned to talk to them about today.

Cyril was a slim person, with just a touch of elven heritage that peeked through at the very tips of their ears. They turned as Arden approached, brushing a dark ponytail over their shoulder. 

“Captain?”

“Cyril, sorry to bother you. I know you were about to go on watch.”

“It’s not a problem, Gerrit has it handled for now. I heard something happened during dawn watch?”

Arden nodded, motioning for Cyril to walk with him.

“That’s actually what I wanted to speak with you about. Elaine was on lookout, and spotted a person in the water. We pulled him in, and managed to heal him a bit, but… well, I’ll be blunt. There’s somethin’ wrong with the kid, and it reminds me of what happens to you, sometimes. When you’re not all there.” Cyril frowned, motioning for Arden to continue, and he soldiered on. “He’s been hurt bad. On purpose, like. And he looks even younger than you were when you came to us.”

“Well…” the young lookout sighed, twisting their ponytail between their fingers. “When I go… away, like that, it’s like being disassociated from my body, or from the real world. It’s kind of a way of dealing with things that are too hard to think about. He just got here, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes him a while to feel safe enough to come down from that. But I’ll talk to him, if you like. You don’t know where he came from?” Arden shrugged.

“No idea. Must have been upstream, further north. The way he was pinned, I’d guess the river carried him a decent way. Maybe from as far as the sierras.” He nodded to Cyril, clapping them gently on the shoulder. “Go to your watch. I’ll let you know when he wakes.”

It was past noon by the time Percy awoke. In that time, several sailors had come up from belowdecks, asking questions. Apparently, even through his exhaustion, Percy had been having nightmares. The night crew who had been sharing the barracks Arden put him in had been woken several times by screams and sobs, but even these dreams hadn’t been enough to wake the boy. Finally, Arden went down to check on him.

When he entered the barracks, Percy was sitting up in the bunk Arden had shown him to. He sat cross legged against the wall, fiddling with his spectacles and some small metal tools. Arden approached, being sure to make some noise so he didn’t surprise the boy. 

“What are you up to?”

Percy held up the tools, and Arden recognized them as belonging to his quartermaster, who was usually in charge of tinkering and small fixes to mechanisms aboard the ship. Percy used them deftly, manipulating the joints and tiny screws of his spectacles to fit properly again.

“Where’d you get those?”

Percy stopped his work again, briefly, and pointed to a bunk across the room, the one where the quartermaster usually stayed. He seemed to finish, tightening the last screw, and settled the glasses back on his nose, now unbent and properly fitted to his face. He stood, and walked over to the quartermaster’s bunk, replacing the tools in the leather wrap they were usually kept in and tucking them away into the trunk at the foot of the bed. Then he looked back at Arden with those empty, distant, eyes.

“Percy, you wanna come up to the deck with me? You can meet the crew.” Percy stared back at him, a question in his eyes. Arden began to slowly walk towards the stairs, letting Percy follow at his own pace, and keeping his voice soft and level.

“See, I’m a bit of a soft touch. I manage to pick up strays everywhere I go. Pretty much everyone on this ship was in your shoes at some point, or a pair that look a lot like ‘em. You don’t have to talk, not if you don’t want to, but as long as you can work, you’re welcome in my crew.” He glanced back, and sure enough, Percy was just a few steps behind him, following up the stairs. Arden smiled slightly, and ushered him out into the early afternoon sunlight. As Percy blinked in the sudden brightness, Arden waved to Cyril, who swung down from the crow’s nest and approached.

“Hi! I’m Cyril, what’s your name?” They held out a hand, and Percy took it almost as an automatic reaction, giving a firm shake. His back straightened, his eyes hardened. He took a long, deep, breath, almost like he was about to start singing. But as suddenly as the transformation had occurred, it died. The breath caught in his throat, his eyes dropped to the deck, and…

“...Percy.” 

Cyril ignored the odd reaction, and simply clasped Percy’s forearm gently in their free hand. “Pleased to meet you, Percy. I’m going to be… showing you the ropes, as it were.” They snorted slightly at their own joke. No reaction from Percy, who simply followed them towards the rigging.

Percy stayed with the crew as months passed, travelling south even as the seasons changed around them. The captain quickly gave him his own sleeping quarters-- formerly a storage room on the opposite side of the ship from the rest of the barracks, where he would not wake the others with his screams. The navigator explained their fishing routes to him-- a two-year journey to the southernmost reaches of the Lucidian ocean, then back up the coast and towards the Alabaster Sierras once more. Cyril taught him how to be a lookout, and with help from the other deckhands, he learned to follow the motions of the ship’s rigging. The quartermaster eventually got him his own set of tinkering tools, which he already seemed to know how to use quite deftly. It quickly became clear that this was his favored task-- building and repairing details of the ship, and even occasionally improving upon mechanisms that were already there. It became well known that if you left anything mechanical near Percy, you’d find it later, taken apart and rebuilt better than you’d left it. He did these tasks seemingly without thinking, floating through day to day work in a constant state of disassociation. The only time they saw a hint of anything more was when he worked on something new, tinkering with some improvement to the ship or some odd, esoteric project of his own. However, more often than not, these projects were abandoned half finished, or found broken and destroyed somewhere. Everyone tried-- Arden and Cyril especially-- to get through to him, but nothing seemed to take. 

Percy no longer looked like the child they had brought on board. His skin, though it stayed pale despite the sun, grew callused and roughened by wind and rope, and the scars all over his body hardened into white tissue. His shaved hair grew back white as snow, its once brown color bleached away from stress and trauma. Stubble, grey and white as his hair, grew on his chin, and his face gained angles and lines far beyond his young age. He still spoke little, but could hold short conversations with the other crew members. 

Every so often, they saw that hint of someone else in his bearing. They saw his back straighten, his shoulders pull back, his face become refined and proud. They heard the pause before he stated his name, and after, where it felt oddly like there should be more to it than the two syllables he always gave. But there never was, and his posture always faded back to what they recognized as Percy-- closed off, purposeless, empty.

The change came after they left the warm waters and saltwater fish of the Lucidian Ocean. Percy had been with the crew for nearly two years, all that time barely speaking unless spoken to, and never about anything personal. Even Cyril, who spent perhaps the most time trying to get through to him, was hard pressed to think of a time Percy had been the one to initiate a conversation. Until one evening, there he was, climbing up to the crow’s nest during Cyril’s late evening watch, an oddly manic look in his eye.

“Cyril. Do you dream?”

Cyril gave Percy a strange look, but they nodded. “Yes. I dream about my old crew a lot. I dream of good things too, sometimes, but the bad is what I remember.” Percy nodded, looking out over the sea. Cyril waited, giving him time to gather his thoughts. It was tempting to push, but he was loath to risk ruining this rare moment of openness from Percy. 

“Do you dream… of things that aren’t real?”

“Well, most dreams aren’t real. Or aren’t accurate, at least. It’s your brain mixing up things you remember, and putting them together. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they don’t.”

Percy sighed gustily, shaking his head in frustration.

“No, I mean… of something you don’t remember. Not real things that happened, mixed up, but... something else entirely. And it’s there, every night.” Percy’s words started to pick up speed, flowing like they never had before, and Cyril stared at him in shock. “Every night since it happened… how long ago, now? It starts out as a dream, like a dream should be… and then the smoke comes. And it speaks to you, whispering, and it wants revenge. And you’ve.. _I’ve_ never seen it before, but I know it. Just like… it seems to know me. And all I have to do is agree to make something, to make what it wants, what _I_ want, but I’m… scared. And when I wake up and try to make what I saw, it doesn’t come out right. Everything I try to create falls apart, and I give up. Until the next night, when... it comes again.” Percy breathed heavily for a moment, his bright blue eyes wild with something Cyril couldn’t place. 

“Percy…” 

Percy sighed again, heavy with pain and frustration. His shoulder slumped forward. Cyril could see him beginning to pull into himself once more, and they pushed forward in a last-ditch effort to keep the moment alive.

“Percy, listen to me. Dreams are difficult. Especially the ones that keep coming back. And the thing is, your brain focuses on that fear, until there isn’t anything else. You can’t really recover, and be a part of the waking world again, until you face that fear in your dream. It might never go away, but at least you wake up from it. And right now… I’m not sure you’re waking up from that fear.”

When Cyril finished, Percy was staring directly at them again. The strange, manic light had returned to his eyes.

“No. I’m not.”

Cyril smiled slightly.

“You can come to me, if the dreams get bad. I understand. But I think you have to face that… that smoke, and tell it what you want. It’s a representation of that fear, of whatever you went through, and you don’t need to fear it anymore.”

“Tell it what I want.”

“That’s right. I know you can do it, Percy.” 

Percy shook his head, and took a deep breath. “...Percival.”

Cyril blinked. “Right. I know you can do it… Percival.”

Percy swung down from the crow’s nest, clambering through the ropes and down towards his room. Cyril watched him go. They’d said what they had always wanted someone to say to them. They’d helped Percy come out of his shell, in some way. They’d even had a real conversation with Percy, hopefully the first of more to come. For the first time, he’d volunteered information about himself-- his dreams, his feelings, even his full first name, Percival. This was a good thing. A step towards recovery.

Cyril pushed down the lingering feeling of dread, and focused on their watch.

Percy didn’t come out of his room the next day. Everyone who passed by could hear the ringing of metal, the whooshing of the small forge Percy had set up in there. Around noon, Cyril knocked, bringing lunch, but there was no answer. Captain Arden stopped by, around dinnertime. Still, nothing. The door was locked, and Arden was always careful not to intrude on his crew’s privacy. He knew everyone here needed time to themselves. So he didn’t force the door open, just left food outside.

The next day was the same. Elaine walked by before and after her night watch to hear the clanging continuing, without pause, through the night. The food was untouched. She took the plate, and left breakfast. When the quartermaster came with lunch, breakfast was still there. 

The next morning, just before noon, they hit ground in southern exandria. Here, they would switch out trade and rigging from ocean sailing back to river, and head north once more. Arden stopped by Percy’s door one more time, and found silence.

He knocked, and after a moment the door opened. There stood Percy, smudged with soot and holding something wrapped in cloth. For all that he had not eaten nor slept, he looked shockingly awake, his blue eyes wide and almost painfully present. He looked Arden directly in the eye when he spoke.

“Is there a forge in this port? A real one, with a workshop.”

Arden stammered a minute, caught off guard by this change in Percy.

“Yeah, there should be. You have something to work on?”

“I do.” Percy paused, and for a moment he looked like the boy Arden was used to. “I… I don’t want to go back north.” 

Arden smiled sadly. He had to admit, he’d expected this day. His ship had a two year route, giving the fish time to replenish in each area before they returned. After those two years it started over, heading back to where they found Percy originally. He wasn’t surprised to hear Percy didn’t wish to return to the scene of whatever had happened. 

“Alright. We’ll tell the crew.” He pursed his lips, holding back a rush of emotion. “We’ll be sorry to see you go, son.”

The slightest flinch, and then that unfamiliar Percy was back, gathering his things quickly and with a vigor he’d never possessed before. He walked in step with Arden to the main deck and towards the gangplank, standing ready to disembark. Arden let loose a bugle blast, calling all hands on deck, and the crew gathered around as Percy stood tall before them all. His eyes were no longer clouded, but as hard and cold as ice, or stone. 

“I thank you all for everything you have done for me. I have a purpose now, that draws me away from you, but I shall forever be in your debt.” He glanced over at Cyril, and they drew back just slightly under the penetrating gaze. Was it their imagination, or was there a hint of dark, smoky, blackness dancing behind the blue? They looked away.

Arden stepped forward one last time, and clasped Percy’s forearm. 

“Of course. Just know, if you ever need us, you have the service of Captain Arden and his crew.” 

Percy clasped his arm in return, inclining his head in a slight, graceful, bow. He took that familiar, deep breath, as if poised to sing.

“And you, the service of Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski De Rolo the third.” 

The crew watched his back, held tall and straight, as he hefted his few belongings and that cloth wrapped item he held so carefully, and walked down the gangplank and into the city.

Arden and his crew sailed north the next day, towards Whitestone and the Alabaster Sierras. Like so many would after them, they found the town they used to trade in an undead shell of its former self. And, like so many after them, they did not return.


End file.
